Exemplar Education leaflet

[Emmags0309]

Hello, I've just joined mumsnet because I really want to warn people about this company. My daughter's school gave out leaflets for exemplar education. They then sent a text and another leaflet telling us to return forms. Exemplar Education is a trading name of EBS Systems Ltd. Being an accountant I checked the public record for this company. This company's directors have not filed accounts with the Registrar of Companies. They are overdue as of 13/07/17. It is a legal requirement for directors to file accounts on time. I asked the headteacher why the school is promoting a company that is withholding its financial position from the public record. Anything could be going on with this company. I believe they ask customers to sign credit agreements. This company could be in trouble but how do we know without accounts? The head teacher agreed to stop the promotion on ethical grounds but i since found out that they are carrying on. I'm a joke to them. They won't reply to my questions in writing. I've written to the chair of governors. Does anyone know of anything else I can do? I thought teachers and schools were meant to be socially responsible and this is so sad.
Thanks for any replies , Emma

Oh I will check that one!!!

Hi Electringa
Sorry to hear that you are having difficulties too.
I reported Exemplar to Trading Standards got a standard letter back - they just logged the complaint.. But the more people writing to them the better. The Financial Ombudsman are prompt and helpful so far.. My case is under investigation.

Did the salesman tell you it's easy to cancel?

I agree with yr comments about glitchy service old videos but I've not argued those points with exemplar. I wish Id never signed up. If I can help in any way dHu o message on here.

Good luck!

Hi,

I do not remember about cancelling at all.
My biggest dissapointment is the old videos, really outdated methods. I've seen some free videos on youtube that were way better and much more fun for kids than exemplar lessons , that were made so long time ago and don't think so been updated for ages.
And the fact that system is so slow and I tried it on other pc as well.
Let me know what financial ombudsman will do, I may book an appointment with one and really log complaint with trading standards, just need to sit down and do it.

Hi,

I used to work for Exemplar Education and Student Support Centre and you will be absolutely disgusted if you had an insight to how the company is run and how it works. I was employed with them for a couple of years and left due to how unethical they where. If anyone needs any help regarding complaints and procedures please get in touch. I can give you an insight to how the company is run and I think it is wrong how they try sell parents the program. Im thinking about taking it to the press myself because they need to be stopped.

Hi Happyman21 - I'd be keen to talk to you about these guys - seems very interesting and they're clearly exploiting people's vulnerabilities. How can I contact you?

Hi.

I finally found time to e-mail them. I requested to provide me with the date when the tutorials were made for both math and phonics. I can't comment on literacy as t never worked for us!!
I also complained about short lead on pc due to which my child can't sit properly on her desk.
System is slow, outdated.
I asked also how many times they changer their name as a company. I just want to see what they will reply.
Happyman21 - it would be great to find out more from you. I am really keen in cancelling this but really don't want to go through media. Would like to avoid attention or my name being in media at all.
I asked them how I could cancell all the contract as we feel it was missold to us and also our financial circumstances are due to change soon which puts me under a lot of pressure.

Thanx

Hi Elektringa,

The first thing to do is to put it in writting that you want to cancel, and send it special recorded delivery one of there offices (I can give you their address and the name one of the managers), then cancel the direct debit, but keep checking with your bank because when you signed the financial agreement it allows them to reset up the direct debit, so keep checking and cancel it.

Keep checking with royal mail to see wheather they have received your letter as this is proof that it has been received or not.

You need to get in touch with the financial ombudsman because they can also investigate.

Then go back to you childs school and ask why the form was sent out in the first place, and ask if the school was aware on any DBS checks done on the course advisors/sales reps that came out to your house. When I worked for them the company did no police checks, this is one of the reasons why they ask for both parents to be at the appointment so there is less chance of your child to be left alone with the advisor/rep.

Hi

What would you like to know?

Hi happyman21,

How do I get in touch with you, I called them a number of times and they kept tossing me around, I went ahead and cancelled my direct debit and had the laptop sent back and made sure I get recorded delivery and called the rapidit to confirm receipt. 3j first said to me Exemplar do not want to cancel that’s why they keep referring you to us(3j). Anyway I have so far stood my ground but now the 3j guys are constantly contacting me to pay my finance which I have refused.

My son come home with this yesterday, the real questions we need to be asking is:

Why are school resources and our children being used to promote private, profit making organisations?

Why Exemplar Education? After some basic research this company appears to be anything but credible so why do they get the advantage of marketing through our public schools?

someone, somewhere has given authorisation for this to happen. Id like to know who and will be pursuing this until i find out.

Disgusted and shocked is an understatement.

p.s in the interests of gender equality this forum should be called parentsnet. ;)

4llex
Did you get a reply from the school yet?

I know head teachers aren’t perfect and they can make mistakes, but once their attention is drawn to the fact that school is promoting a company that encourages people to take out high interest loans they should immediately stop the promotion for ethical reasons. It should be so easy for them to stop, as I was told that the school does not sign any contracts with the company.

Even though I was very polite when I told them, they carried on. I think certain head teachers don’t like admitting they made a mistake, even if it means they are contradicting their own values policy and principles of public service.

After the head teacher and chair of governors lied, I contacted ofsted. To be honest I wouldn’t have done this if the head teacher hadn’t been tweeting negative things about the school. The next day he tweeted that ofsted had called to arrange a visit. This points toward the fact that ofsted might be interested if your complaint to the school gets ignored.

Ironically I’m glad this whole thing happened because it gave me the motivation to move my daughter to a better school.

happyman21 I’ve pm’d you

hi
I signed up to exempler education 2 weeks ago and realised it's a scam.If you go on english and scroll down to the essay writing section and do the practice which I did.i typed one word and received 100 percent score.i did it again and recieved the same score.i even recieved a email stating that i achieved gold status for essay writing.
Try it yourself and you'll see.
I'll be making a complaint because parents are receiving false feedback for their children work.

Hi,

Has anyone had a favourable out come from the Financial Ombudsman Service? This is shocking that so many parents are in the same boat with these * (words escape me!!).
Has anyone tried using the press?
Finally, is there anything we can do as a group get the redress we all deserve.
Thanks for reading.

Google brings up articles in the national press from 2011, but the company has since changed it’s trading name (I wonder why!). It would be really good if there were more recent articles about Exemplar Education; how they encourage people to take out high interest finance agreements and how public funds are being used to promote their services.

I’d love to hear if any of the posters have had any success with cancelling.

Hi Emmags0309,

I arranged a meeting with the head before the leaflets were due to be collected. Armed with all the information I acquired on this company there was little she could say in terms of justifing the distribution.
She agreed to not deal with this compnay again, not to hand the leaflets over and even said she would 'have a word' with the sales person involved with the company.

These decisons are made at school level and luckily for the parents of my sons schools the head was open to listening and rectifying any potential harm.

This doesnt take away the fact that this is still a massive failure on the schools part by not doing their research into companies they decide to promote.

Although nothing illegal is happening here, the marketing proceedure adopted by the company is to give an impression of trust by taking adavantage of the parent / school relationship when the reality is no rational person would trust this company knowing just a little of them.

There are potential actions for disgruntled customers, it can be argued that the product was only found to not meet the expected standard after its use and as this can only happen after the 14 days cooling off period you can argue to break the contract.

Just logged in to say thank you Emma.
I had an appointment booked with Exemplar, as had heard of a ex-colleagues children having great benefit from an online/postal resource (I don't know what their course was called) in addition to school work, to prepare them for 11+ exams.
However I rang today to cancel as my DH is no longer free that day that they were booked. They said they cant see me and DC's alone, which I thought was strange. So I googled and found your post.
I am glad I did, and I won't be rearranging an appointment.
I will speak to the school.

Thank you for the information. I am currently in the same situation. They have refused to cancel and I have gone ahead to cancel my direct debit. I will send back the laptop too and continue to stand my ground.

Please I am interested in that. How do I contact you.

DO NOT FILL any forms from this company even if your not interested, I filled one in about 4 years ago said I wasn’t interested and they still continued to ring me 4 times a day week in week out I finally answered and said I wasn’t interested and thought that would be the end but it was just beginning of a never ending nightmare. They continued to bombard me every year without fail, I blocked their number and they called off withheld and got quite Leary when I asked them not to call again, in the end I changed my number as it was easier. And I was also told they were DBS checked but that is a total lie do we don’t even know who we are actually letting into our homes and around our children

Thank you all who have posted here, I searched Exemplar on Mumsnet because I am concerned that they are getting data through marketing purposes by requesting forms to be completed through school - parents could easily think it's something for school and hand over addresses, phone numbers and their kids' names. I am going to email the headteacher and other governors again with this link.

Thanks again all. I emailed the governing body including the head yesterday and got an email saying the school had been offered "free" online licences and hoping this allayed my concerns.

I emailed back saying no, not really and reiterating my concerns at greater length, with a link to this thread, making points about the use and abuse of school communications, past newspaper coverage, data protection, the dodgy contracts and concerns about quality of the service, and that online licences are not free if they're being bought with our data and are they to something that's worth it anyway.

The head has responded saying that they won't do this again next year. Still a bit concerned about this year but I feel I'm getting somewhere, and am grateful to posters here for offering me so much to back up my arguments, and also because I felt empowered to argue knowing it's not just me.

I objected quite strongly to this company when they used the kids' previous school to mailshot parents.

The whole mail shot was totally intended to deceive... made to look like a standard school letter addressed from the headteacher with text along the lines of "I would like all our school parents to look at the information enclosed with this letter and give it serious consideration". It fell down in our school purely because the head went by the title Principal which set my bullshit detector ringing on high alert.

Then they sent a "reminder" slip out - again designed to look exactly like the sort of reminder/permission slips that school send out demanding our details and our children's details even if we WEREN'T interested in it all (obviously for future marketing purposes). Think it took in a lot of the less aware parents who just get given bits of paper from school and automatically fill it in and send it back - I sent back a reply slip absolutely covered in my thoughts about how scammy they were being and how I did not expect my child's school bag to be used to attempt to con me as a marketing tool.

All very very very shady as fuck and I know that school and they'd do anything for cash so are probably still sending the promotional shite out now.

GrimSqueaker, yes, I had a very similar reaction to that reminder slip.

I have been having problems with Exemplar since I got the programme last year. It worked for 3 months before we had problems receiving the programme. I tried to contact the company with no luck. Only when I stopped payment from the bank did I get a call. They are still refusing to give me the service I have been (and still am as they threatened legal action) paying for. I am currently waiting to hear back from the Ombudsman, as like most people I was mis sold the product and it doesn't work.